French language without a shadow of hesitation
—well: a white cotton or very coarse
linen under-garment. And this ordinarily
innermost garment is very liberally displayed;
for, the gown sleeves are very scanty—mere
shoulder-straps, in fact: and the real sleeves
are those of the undergarment, to name
which, is to run in peril of deportation to
that Cayenne of conversaziones—Coventry.
There is an equally generous display of body
linen, more or less dazzlingly white in front,—
the garment forming an ample gorget from
the neck to the waist, the bust of the gown
being cut square, of the antique form, with
which you are familiar in the portraits of
Anne Boleyn,—but very much lower. In
aristocratic Russian society the ladies have
their necks and shoulders as décolletées as
the best modern milliner among us could
desire; and in aristocratic Russian theatres
the ballerine are as scantily draped as at home
here; but, among the gens du peuple,
remnants of oriental jealousy and seclusion of
women are very perceptible, and the forms
are studiously concealed. But for an
eccentricity of attire, I arn about to point out, high
boots, long skirts, and high necks are productive
of a most exemplary shapelessness and
repudiation of any Venus-like toilettes, as
arranged by those eminent modistes, the
Mademoiselles Graces.

This trifling eccentricity consists in the
Russian peasant women having a most
bewildering custom of wearing a very tight waist
at mid-neck, and a very full bust at the
waist. Their corsage presents the aspect
of the section of a very ripe, full pear, resting
on its base. Beneath the clavicles all is as
flat as a pancake; where we expect to profit
by the triumphs of tight-lacing as productive
of a genteel and wasp-like waist, we find this
astonishing protuberance. The waist is upside
down. How they manage to accomplish
this astonishing feat; whether they lacteally
nourish dumb-bells or babies made of pig-
lead; whether it be physical malformation,
or some cunning sub-camicial strapping
and bandaging; whether it be the effect of
one or all of these, I am not aware; but there
is that effect in the Baba—baffling, puzzling,
and to me as irritating as though the girl wore
a shoe on her head, or broad-brimmed hats on
her feet. (There is, by the way, really a shoe-
shaped coiffure prevalent among the peasant
girls of Tarjok and Twer. They do not wear
the kakoschnik, but in lieu of that picturesque
head-dress they assume a tall conical structure
of pasteboard, covered, according to
their means, with coloured stuff, silk or
velvet, and ornamented with ribbons, spangles,
bits of coloured glass, and small coins.
The apex of the sugar-loaf cap leans forward
curvilineally, and then is again turned up at
the extreme peak, somewhat in the manner
of a Turkish slipper or papousch. This when,
as is frequently the case, it has a streaming
veil behind, bears a quaint resemblance to
the old peaked head-dresses we see in
STRUTT.) Why am I now irritated because
this Russian slave-woman chooses to go into a
feeble-minded course of ridiculous deformity?
She is not one whit more absurd, or more
deformed, than the high-born ladies in the
West, with the hair so scragged off their
sheep's-heads, with the watch-glass waists,
with the men's coats and tails and big buttons,
with the concave pan-cakes for hats; with
the eleven balloon-skirts one above another,
one, I presume, of wood, one of block-tin, one
of steel, one of whalebone, one (I know) of the
horse, another (may be) of the cat; a seventh,
perchance, of the nether millstone. Now I
think of it, I am more, much more, irritated
at the Guys, who go about civilised streets,
—the Guys who ought to be beautiful
women. I cry out loudly against the fashions
at noon-day. I clench my fist on the public
pavement. I daresay the police have
noticed me. I feel inclined to pull off my shoes,
like George Fox, the roaring Quaker, and
walk through the streets of Lichfield, or
London, or Paris, crying, Woe! to the wicked
city.

On her head, the Baba wears a very old,
foul, dingy, frayed, and sleezy yellow shawl,
tied carelessly under her head, in a knot like
a prize-fighter's fist; one peak of which
shawl falls over her head, on to her back,
like the peak of the cagoule of a black penitent.
It is a very ugly, dirty, head-covering;
with a tartan pattern it would be first-cousin
to the snood of a Highland shepherdess, and
it is even more closely related, in general
arrangement, to the unsightly head-shawl
worn by the factory-girls of Blackpool and
Oldham. But, this is only her every-day
head-dress. For Sundays and feast-days she
has the kakoschnik, than which no prettier
or gracefuller coiffure could be found, after
the jewelled turban of the Turkish Sultana
has been admitted as the pearl of pearls, and
light of the harem of beauty and grace.

The kakoschnik is a shallow shako (that
worn by our artillerymen twenty years since,
but not exceeding, here, four inches in depth,
may be taken as a sufficiently accurate
model), shelving from front to back, concave
as to summit, and terminated at the back
with a short, fan-like veil of white lace. The
kakoschnik is worn quite at the back of the
head: the parting of the hair, as far as where
our tortoiseshell-comb uprises in the back
hair, being left uncovered. In wet weather,
this kakoschnik is but an inefficient
protection for the head; but the Baba disdains,
when once she has assumed the national
head-dress, to cover it with the inelegant
shawl-cowl. In a dripping shower she
will, at most, pull the skirt of her gown
over her head. The substructure of the
kakoschnik is buckram—more frequently
pasteboard. It is covered with the richest
and brightest-coloured material the Baba can
afford to buy. It is decorated with trinkets,